The present invention relates to write-once memory devices, and in particular to methods for efficiently using such devices, particularly in conjunction with the storage of digital files such as voice, music or image files.
Write-once memory devices have the advantage that they can be made relatively inexpensively, but each memory location in the memory device can only be written once. For this reason, there is a need to use the available capacity of a write-once memory device efficiently.
Jones U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,685 discloses a system that combines a magnetic cache storage with optical disk storage. When a write command is executed, the associated file is written into the re-writable magnetic cache. If necessary, the oldest file in the magnetic cache is moved to optical disk to clear space for the new file.
Sciupac U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,125 describes a method for reading and writing files on non-erasable storage media. The disclosed system uses a re-writable cache to store a file allocation table. Only after the operating system finishes updating the cache memory, and the data in the cache is ready for writing, does the driver update the non-erasable storage media.
A need presently exists for improved methods for using write-once memory efficiently, especially for systems that store digital media files in write-once memory in response to consumer actions.
By way of introduction, the preferred method described below is performed with an acquisition/playback device that is coupled with a solid-state, write-once memory device. The acquisition/playback device acquires digital information, which may correspond to voice, music, image, video or any other digital information. This digital information is initially stored as a digital file in a re-writable memory, and the stored digital file is then presented to the user for review with the acquisition/playback device. Depending upon whether the user wishes to store or discard the digital file, either the stored digital file is stored in the write-once memory device, or alternatively the stored digital file is cleared from the re-writable digital memory without storing it in the write-once memory device.
In this way, the user can review the digital file, and files that are discarded after this review are never stored in the write-once memory. The limited storage capacity of the write-once memory device is thereby used efficiently.
Similarly, an acquisition/playback device itself can review the digital file stored in the re-writable memory and determine whether to commit that file to the write-once memory or to discard the file from the re-writable memory.
The foregoing discussion has been intended by way of general introduction, and should not be used to narrow the scope of the following claims.